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World of Darkness Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 from Hardsuit Labs

Vatnik Wumao
Joined
Jan 29, 2019
Messages
13,187
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Niggeria
The entire narrative team getting the chop shouldn't come as a surprise anyway. They were all hired for Bloodlines 2 and now that the game is out of Hardsuit's hands, this is the natural outcome. Its not an indication of how bad or good they were at writing.

The real test is whether the new dev invites members of the old narrative team on board.
 

Harthwain

Magister
Joined
Dec 13, 2019
Messages
4,688
Even if we acknowledge the few exceptions, the signal to noise ratio is still pretty low.
What's the ratio?

And given what we've seen on games like Dumpsterfire and this one, the presence of multiple women narrative designers should be a major red flag, and that's being charitable.
That sounds like a problem with the management, if studio goes through their narrative designers like this, but I thought we have already established that Hardsuit Labs was bad at managing the project (the game, the staff, etc.)?

Finally, I woud never compare Amy Hennig to the vapid dangerhairs we've seen in this thread. She's obviously a very competent developer, otherwise she wouldn't have been able to create a series as successful as Uncharted. But are we going to pretend she had a POSITIVE influence in the gaming industry? Like, seriously?
Who's saying that? It's you who made a general statement that "every game gaming company should avoid like the plague: women" when it comes to position of a writer. I pointed out to a discussion where others already mentioned good female writers. Therefore I conclude the problem isn't in women being hired as writers. The problem is in what kind of women are being hired as writers. I could even go further than that: the problem is what kind of people are being hired to do any job in the industry as a whole. Bad people: bad results.
 
Joined
Feb 19, 2021
Messages
279
The entire narrative team getting the chop shouldn't come as a surprise anyway. They were all hired for Bloodlines 2 and now that the game is out of Hardsuit's hands, this is the natural outcome. Its not an indication of how bad or good they were at writing.

The real test is whether the new dev invites members of the old narrative team on board.
Yeah it's no surprise they got the axe and there's no way of knowing if any of them were good or not. It's more looking at their Twitter profiles and seeing that they all share the same ideology. It's safe to assume the danger hair brain rot would seep into the narrative and Bloodlines 2 already had a reputation for being obnoxiously woke.

Maybe Josh Sawyer can hire the good ones to help him make his new game more interesting than Pillars.
 

IHaveHugeNick

Arcane
Joined
Apr 5, 2015
Messages
1,870,123
I am seriously fed up with this trick that keeps happening where oldschool devs like Mitsoda and Avellone are used mostly for PR purposes but the bulk of the writing is done by 20 year old Commiefornians.
 
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Duraframe300

Arcane
Joined
Dec 21, 2010
Messages
6,395
But are we going to pretend she had a POSITIVE influence in the gaming industry? Like, seriously?

The games she directed in the Legacy of Kain series definitely were great games and had a positive impact.

We can argue about Uncharted (Where I'd argue that the games themselves fit an Indiana Jones narrative, but the influence itself on other games was bad)
 
Vatnik Wumao
Joined
Jan 29, 2019
Messages
13,187
Location
Niggeria
I am seriously fed up with this trick that keeps happening where oldschool devs like Mitsoda and Avellone are used mostly for PR purposes but the bulk of the writing is done by 20 year old Commifornians.

Avellone was sacked when he sort of admitted to molesting a woman right? And all his work on Bloodlines 2 was scrapped as well from what I vaguely remember. The new writers would have been brought in to fill the resulting gaps.
 

Lambach

Arcane
Joined
Feb 11, 2016
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12,730
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Belgrade, Removekebabland
I am seriously fed up with this trick that keeps happening where oldschool devs like Mitsoda and Avellone are used mostly for PR purposes but the bulk of the writing is done by 20 year old Commifornians.

The "oldschool devs" are just as consumed by the [C U R R E N T Y E A R] zeitgeist as the woke Californian college freshmen freshpersxons, so I'm not sure why you think there would be a difference between the two in terms of quality of their writing.

It's pretty much only George Ziets who hasn't had the chance to publicly display his complete downfall as of yet, but it's probably coming.
 

MRY

Wormwood Studios
Developer
Joined
Aug 15, 2012
Messages
5,703
Location
California
The existence of a couple of exceptionally based women out of many hundreds just proves the general principle. He forgot to mention Terri Brosius also.
Giving indisputable examples in response to a "literally none" post is not the exception that proves the rule, it's the exception that disproves the rule. I wasn't trying to be exhaustive, and could come up with more, though "influential" makes everything subjective (I wouldn't consider Brosius influential, for instance). If we are just looking for accomplished women game writers, I should hope that Emily Short, Christy Marx, Jane Jensen, and Helen Hindpere would be beyond dispute. (I would put Short as the most "influential" of that bunch.) Any list I have is going to skew toward older games because I don't play many games any more, because time is needed for something to stand the test of time, and because a lot modern game writing does not appeal to me. None of that has anything to do with whether the writer is a man or a woman.

She's obviously a very competent developer, otherwise she wouldn't have been able to create a series as successful as Uncharted. But are we going to pretend she had a POSITIVE influence in the gaming industry? Like, seriously?
Maybe I'm just old, but criticizing Hennig by pointing at Uncharted while ignoring the Legacy of Kain series strikes me as a negative reflection on you, not Hennig.

More generally, I have no idea who had a POSITIVE (all caps and bold!) influence on the industry. For instance, I have enormous admiration for Jordan Mechner, whose "High atop a craggy cliff..." was what first inspired me to want to write stories for video games, and who managed to create amazing games across an incredibly long span. But was his influence positive? The trend toward cinematic action games might have started with him. Planescape: Torment had a profound effect on me, and every game I've worked on since playing it has, in one way or another, been an homage to it. But was Avellone's influence POSITIVE? As I wrote in another thread when people were questioning whether he had any influence at all:
Creative-wise, I mean. He will die a very wealthy man, but an influential one? Up in the air.
Before PS:T, RPGs -- even Infinity-engine RPGs -- were primarily about combat, traps, navigating tricky dungeons, building an adventuring party, etc., and their plots were essentially hero journeys about defeating a demon or dragon of some kind. After PS:T, RPGs are primarily about dialogue, lore, building a debating society/salon, and their plots typically subvert heroic tropes and explore an guilt-ridden protagonist overcoming his inner demons. Some of that may have been inevitable (other media and genres have certainly moved in similar ways), but to trivialize the role Chris played in that sea change is unfair; it diminishes his legacy. I would even go so far as to say you couldn't have something like the new Star Wars trilogy without Chris first fatally undermining the morality and heroism of the setting. So I think his impact even outside of RPGs is significant.

Aside from changing the nature of RPGs, he changed the composition of the people who made them. Again, I think the Codex generally doesn't love those personnel decisions, but he went out of his way to promote and advance young women as game writers, which was a real change -- older RPGs were typically written by men who were steeped in grognard culture. I don't want to enter the debate as to his motives; the practical effect is undeniable though. Again, this is something that was happening across the genre and may have happened without him, but it's unfair to not recognize his role in pushing for this change.
Br5fmqOCcAExhFq.jpg

Whatever his shortcomings, I think his influence is enormous. It may be that he changed the industry in ways that will lead to his own obscurity, but I think, as his drawing above indicates, his hope and joy was to have a drink in the Zoe Quinn bar, and I'd like to think he's achieved that.
On the standards this thread is applying, his influence would probably be deemed negative, not positive.

Anyway, I try to avoid entering into Codexian political drama, but at the same time, I can't let a casual slander on the greats of the adventure game genre pass unanswered, and when one announces a categorical criticism of women writers, that is a criticism on many of the adventure game genre's greats. I would hope that between Emily Short and Helen Hindpere, there would be no dispute over whether even outspoken left-wing women writers have made enormous contributions to video games.
 

Roguey

Codex Staff
Staff Member
Sawyerite
Joined
May 29, 2010
Messages
35,653
The entire narrative team getting the chop shouldn't come as a surprise anyway. They were all hired for Bloodlines 2 and now that the game is out of Hardsuit's hands, this is the natural outcome.

Sam claims she wasn't hired for Bloodlines 2, but her project was cancelled regardless. :M Since she seemed secure about not being at risk for being fired, it likely wasn't Bloodlines 2 DLC. My guess is that Hardsuit was pulling a Feargus and using Paradox money to fund it. :lol:
 

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